Corner of First and Myth

Hmmm... so I haven't posted since July. Well, okay then. I've been busily working on the next book. The Corner of First and Myth is a collection of 14 short stories set in the City where mythology mashes up with the mundane.

Here's what it's all about.

A Day at the Mall

Description: The dead rise. This makes it
difficult to run a shop at the mall.

Source: Crosses characters from the
"Epic of Gilgamesh" with a woman working in a shop at a mall.

Why?: This is the era of silly (or not)
zombie stories and I wanted to start with a normal woman opening the closet and
finding not a talking cup, but a toothless zombie.

Waiting

Description: Hades waits for the return of spring.

Source: From the Greek Eleusinian mysteries. The kidnapping of
Kore/Persephone, the Greek goddess of the spring, by Hades, Greek god of the
underworld. The story is from Hades point of view.

Why?: I was reading Dante's Inferno (Canto 7) and for some reason
Hades kidnapping Persephone sprang full blown into my head pretty much as you
see it.

In Whose Savage Heart

Description: The goddess of nature searches for her missing daughter. A woman
mourns her dead son. A mediation on winter and springtime.

Source: From the Greek Eleusinian mysteries. The kidnapping of
Kore/Persephone, the Greek goddess of the spring, by Hades, Greek god of the
underworld. The story is from Demeter's point of view. Includes triggers for
non-consensual sex.

Why?: Having written "Waiting", I wanted to work my way
through different perspectives on the same events. Here I wanted to balance
Demeter's divinely immense desperation at the kidnapping of her child with the
quieter story of a "normal" person mourning her missing son.

Into the Looking Glass

Description: The other side of the mirror, spring in the land of the dead.

Source: From the Greek Eleusinian mysteries. The kidnapping of
Kore/Persephone, the Greek goddess of the spring, by Hades, Greek god of the
underworld. The story is from Kore/Persephone's point of view.

Why?: A woman's journey to experience tends to be, "She had
adventures and then she got married. Happily ever after. The end." I
wanted to play into that trope of becoming an adult, while using the later
Adonis story to look at the "ever after". Which is why so many of the
stories in this collection are, in their way, variations of the Persephone
story.

Queer as the Fork When the Knife
Ran Away with the Spoon

Description: Beauty grew up in a box. He divided himself. How could he know
who he was, unless he undid the wrapping?

Source: A retelling of "Beauty and the Beast" if Beauty were a
black, gay, magic man with a velvet fetish and knack for roses. The
Beast really doesn't know what to make of the Beauty who showed up.

Why?: I knew I wanted to do a gender reversed Beauty and the Beast, but
I didn't really want to write the monstrous feminine. From there, this story
sprang to life full blown, because Beauty needed to exist.

A Little Goddess

Description: Like when Isis went to live in the marsh and begged for food for
her baby, Serqa went to live on the roof of the Gorgos Sisters Hellenic
Gymnasium for girls. Like Isis, she had a curse to lift and steps to take
through the world that was full of magic if you’d stop to tell the tale.

Source: A very modified retelling of Francis Burnett's A Little
Princess in an Egyptian/Greek magical realism setting. Mythology referenced
is the story of Medusa and the very complicated Egyptian mythological family
dynamics.

Why?: I've always loved a A Little Princess and I wanted to play
with the redemption of a monster, who if you're familiar with the myth of
Medusa, really got the short end of the stick. Although, that describes quite a
few myths.

The Tyrolean CEOs Virgin
Secretary

Description: From secretary - to kept man!

Hunt Zmenn had worked as Snow White's
personal secretary at the Tyrolean Mining Corporation for three years. For
three years, he'd kept the secret of his love since, after all, Snow White was
a wealthy CEO and he was just a secretary raised in an orphanage after his parents
were eaten by wolves.

When Ms. White's fiancé, Mr. Charming,
left her for another woman, they ended up making love in the office!

Soon, he and Snow had more than just a
working relationship. Where once Snow was happy to have Hunt safely behind his
desk, now Snow wanted him across hers - passionate and willing.

Could Hunt surrender to Snow's erotic
program and not lose himself to a whirl of desire? Could he find a way to
pencil in love to Snow's agenda?

Source: A parody of Harlequin Present's romances with the roles reversed
and the characters (but only the plot in the loosest sense of the word) from
the story of Snow White, but with a lot more sex and axe carving as well as
guest appearance by Little Red Riding Hood. Also references the Lamia, who is a
snake/woman monster from Greek mythology.

Why?: There needs to be more Harlequin role reversal parody in the
world.

Monstrous

Description:
On a dark desert highway, travelers stop for the
night at a lonely stop.

Source: A riff off of the trope of travelers getting into horror/hijinks
at a mysterious hotel in the middle of nowhere. The mythology mixes the Mayan
Hero Twins, who are Mayan trickster gods, with the Lamia, a Greek mythological
monster. I've given the Lamia some of the characteristics of Circe from the
Odyssey. The poetry starting each Circe section is from "The Lamia"
by Keats.

Why?: I listened to Los Lobos singing their cover of "Hotel
California" one too many times.

Under the Skin

Description: Marie could have managed horrible dreams. The soldiers who
returned from the trenches missing arms and echoes in their eyes had horrible
dreams. Everyone had nightmares. She dreamed of Papa tangled in the barbed
wire, split in half by a winter hail of bullets as he drowned in mud, but that
was normal. The Comtesse Melusine de l'Eau could have told her that they came
from under the skin.

Source: A very loose version of the "Robber Bridegroom" crossed
with Melusine (dragon lady/fairy ancestor of the Plantagenets) from French
folklore.

Why?: Having written the Lamia as an old female monster being defeated,
I wanted a triumph.

Last Nickel in the Nation Sack

Description: Sometimes there ain't nothing for a walking man to do, but play
the sweet Delta Blues.

Source: The Greek myth of Orpheus retold as Southern gothic with various
Vodou loa. The title refers both to a song by Robert Johnson and a vodou
practice in which a woman keeps a "nation sack" with coins and various
articles on her person to keep her man faithful.

Why?: With so many stories drawing on Greek mythology, I wanted to give
a Greek myth a new context, while still playing on a story that featured a
variation of the Hades and Persephone figures.

Moaning of Dust Around Which Branches
Leaf

Description: Adonis never grows in the winter when he lives with his underworld
Mother, Persephone. In the springtime of the year, his bones stretch and crack
as he grows six months at once. The house of his above world Mother, Aphrodite,
is a wild place. He is wild there.

Source: Gives the myth of Adonis the Flowers in the Attic treatment.
It also borrows somewhat liberally from Dante's Inferno and the Sumerian
myth of Inanna's descent into the underworld. The title is a reference to lines
form the poem Khalida by the poet Ali
Ahmed Said (Adonis).

Why?: Because I've always found the idea of Aphrodite raising Adonis
from infancy and then becoming his lover as inherently creepy.

Lent Wings by the Storm

Description: Her first thought is no one will believe her. Her second is that
someone must pay.

Source: Crosses the Sumerian myths of Inanna's
descent to the underworld, which is about Inanna's journey into the
underworld, Inanna and Shukaletuda,
the story of Inanna's rape and her ensuing smackdown of everything, and some
references to Inanna and the Mes, the
story of how she got her mojo. The title comes from a poem by Enheduanna, who
was both the first author in recorded history, and an Akkadian high priestess
of Inanna.

Why?: I couldn't riff multiple times on the myth of Inanna without
actually writing an Inanna story.

Chrysalis A Love Story

Description: Psyche dreams stained glass butterfly wings to fly her high above
the City. Eros already has his wings.

Source: Retelling of the Greek/Roman myth of Eros and Psyche. It also
borrows somewhat liberally from the Sumerian myth of Inanna's descent into the
underworld.

Why?: One of the oldest stories in this collection. I was reading an
article about Monarch butterflies in an inflight magazine and it came full
blown to life. I wrote it on the backs of receipts in my wallet and my flight
itinerary.

Fingers that Shine like Justice

Description: She is the whirlwind, which is fortunate, because it’s a sale
day.

Source: African mythology

Why?: Since we began at the mall, I wanted to end there as well. Wrapping
up with a goddess who rules marketplaces and war.